History has a way of making predictions. In 1964 when one text book was written little did they know they were predicting the capabilities of the Internet, a search engine such as Google, and even a flat screen to view the information!
This is quite interesting to look at and I don't want to steal this persons thunder with what they compiled on their site to demonstrate the point, so you'll want to take a look at what the prediction was to see what I mean! Wow! Who could have known?
Lol - maybe they were confused as to what you are describing as an answering machine. Computers are sort of like the old eight ball game where you would ask a question and then get an answer.
I have taken to calling computers "answer machines", and refer to them as such all the time in my blogs.
Nobody has noticed, or at least commented.
Lol - yes the computer really is the answer machine! Kind of scary in a way!
maybe we should call the computer the answer machine.